Investigating Cursor Control Types for Text Entry on Smartphones

Abstract

The soft keyboard with touch interaction is universally available on mobile phone, a variety of previous studies with respect to the soft keyboard on smart devices had been conducted. However, previous studies of cursor control for text entry on smart devices such as smartphone did not performed. In this study, we compared three types of cursor controls (Default, 3D touch, Slide) in smartphone using Fitts' law and C-D ratio. Then we performed a laboratory experiment with three cursor control types and evaluated using cursor movement time as a quantitative evaluation and 8 subjective metrics for usability as a qualitative evaluation. Then, we discussed what types of cursor control showed better performance and subjective satisfaction through their results. From these results, this study recommended the design guidelines for cursor control on smartphones and developed its study methods as our contributions.